Robert Stein (1950)

Robert Stein (1972)

Robert Stein (2000s)

About Me

editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher,
is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever.
We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality."
This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective.
The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Obama Disrespect Disorder

What
the President is going through now recalls a life lesson I learned in World War
II and never forgot. Barack Obama’s run of apparent incompetence—-on attacking
Syria, rolling out health care, over-surveillance —-may be rooted, at
least in part, on five years of being publicly pounded by criticism and hatred.

No
matter how intelligent, skilled and capable one is, constant bombardment of
carping, laced with hatred and disdain, takes its toll at some level. Has
anyone ever been subjected to more?

Americans
on a less exalted level who have worked for bad bosses can understand what such
treatment can do to shrivel a sense of self-worth. What if they were trapped in
such a situation with no escape and the whole world watching?

This
is not to excuse the President’s shortcomings but to remind fair-minded critics
of what he must be enduring.

I
learned about it dramatically in my teens. In an office I
worked briefly for a lieutenant who was a former college English teacher and
life was good. We talked for hours about books and life, and one evening he
suggested we take the office jeep to the post movie.

Someone had given me driving lessons and, a few days earlier, I had gone
solo to deliver a file across the base. I put it on the seat next to me. At the
first turn, papers flew into my face and, by the time I braked to a stop, the
jeep was in a ditch on the left side of the road nuzzled against a tree.

We started for the movies in proper military fashion; I was driving, my
unsuspecting lieutenant in the passenger seat. A minute later, he was braced
against the windshield, gasping. When we arrived at the movies, soldiers were
staring at a private being chauffeured by an officer.

That kind of dumb luck did not last. My boss was shipped out and replaced
by his polar opposite, a high-school dropout who had earned a commission during
the officer shortage after Pearl Harbor. He despised me on sight and, from then
on, it was like being in a Shrinking Man movie. Every day his beady eyes and
sarcastic voice shriveled me with disdain, criticism and mockery, and I soon
found myself becoming what he saw, an incompetent jerk. I started making
mistakes I had never made before.

That experience gave me something of great value. A few weeks showed me what
could happen if I let myself be treated that way. I swore I never would again,
no matter what. I never did.

Until Barack Obama writes his memoirs, we will have
no idea of how years of massive disrespect affected his psyche, but one former
private has the utmost sympathy for what the Commander-in-Chief is enduring. As he steps to a podium to rebuff the latest attacks,
at least one old soldier is saluting him.

Absolutely 199% on target! I too have wondered what the insanity that has been rampant before the President was even NOMINATED would do to anyone.

I know what it's done to me as an American citizen who has had to watch in horror - it has shown me an America I didn't know existed, at least not any more. Not only does it still exist, it's worse than anything I ever saw growing up in Texas in the 1950s.

It's also more ignorant. It knows nothing of history, doesn't "believe" in science and is just totally devoid of independent, critical thinking skills.